The Last Draft by Sandra Scofield

A dry, practical guide to novel revision with excellent advice and much food for thought. Along the way, Scofield examines work by Mark Haddon, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kent Haruf, Cormac McCarthy, Donna Leon, and Gustave Flaubert, among others.

I especially like her definition of a first draft as a ‘canopy of writing, holding however many drafts it takes {…}.’

Scofield focuses on big picture items - particularly story and structure - and recommends creating overview and chapter summaries, and working from these first, before moving into the text. She presents exercises to analyse scenes, backstory, and transitions, and suggests the writer make detailed studies of a few favourite novels before putting their own manuscript under the microscope.

The Last Draft could just as well be described as The First Revision, and it offers most to the pantser. It assumes the reader has a completed first draft.

Though The Last Draft didn’t whip me into a fever of enthusiasm, I certainly underlined plenty of passages and will try her scene analysis and summary-focused approach this month.

For more on editing, try Molly McCowan’s excellent Effective Editing.